Love Me Blind
by staymagical
Summary: Victorian Era AU: After an illness when he was four left Merlin blind, music became his only escape and gave his life meaning. That is, until Arthur Pendragon walks through the door and adds color to his monochromatic world. But nothing is ever that simple. (In this story, Morgana is Merlin's sister and has no relation to Arthur)
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** **Just a few snippets from a story that's been ruminating in my head for years. I'm working on it bit by bit when the mood strikes but have no idea if it'll ever get written in full. This is a fill from a few months ago for Camelot Drabble prompt of Missed Chances and it just fit so well into the story I had write this scene.**

 **Un-betaed because I'm impatient so I'm sorry for any mistakes. Enjoy**

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The piano cried under Merlin's graceful fingering, familiar smooth ivory keys like the caress of a lover. Notes, a sweet yet sad mimicry of his own heart, fell from the instrument, swirling about the drawing room and soaking into the very soul of the house. For years the building had been Merlin's most avid audience, always waiting with silent bated breath for the next chord, the rise and fall, through all the bright singing octaves, and slow grey melancholic notes.

With eyes closed, he played on.

Soft slippered footsteps filtered through the hum of the piano but Merlin didn't falter, the song thrumming through his fingertips to swirl up his wrists, singing, dancing along waves of loneliness and despondency. Even when the bench shifted under the weight of the newcomer, he didn't stop.

It wasn't until the last final note rang through the air that he allowed himself to finally breathe. The sweet subtle smell of roses petals and lavender tickled his nose permeating from the visitor beside him. He had known who had joined him the second he heard her familiar footsteps. His sister, Morgana.

"Who was that?" Morgana asked, her voice soft and heavy behind the mask of a questioning tone. It didn't bode well for the conversation to come.

Merlin opened his unseeing eyes to the encompassing grey of his world. "Mozart." He ran his fingers idly over the keys, feeling them tremble and breathe under his touch.

"It was lovely."

Merlin nodded in response. Without thought, he pressed down on the keys, his heart bleeding into another piece from memory. He barely tapped out a few notes before Morgana's soft delicate hands covered his gently, cutting the song off in a halting tone that reverberating harshly through the room.

"Merlin, can we—," she began but her voice cut off, hesitant, contemplating her words carefully. Merlin waited, patient. With a sigh and a squeeze of her hand on his, Morgana tried again. "Will you talk to me?"

Merlin tilted his head toward her. His fingers twitched on the piano's frame but he forced himself to pull back and settle them on his thighs. Morgana released her hold.

Without the distraction of the keys under his fingertips, Merlin stroked the rough fabric of his trousers. "What about?"

"You. Me." She paused, her breathing stuttering and catching in her throat. She was nervous, reluctant in her wording but her stubborn nature seemed unable to let her worries pass unspoken. Merlin had an inkling what it was about but hoped he was wrong. It wasn't a conversation he wanted to have with his sister. He was perfectly fine wallowing in his own sorrow and self-pity.

Morgana exhaled in a long sigh. "Arthur."

"Ah." Merlin nodded again, tilting his face down to his lap. The grey of his vision moved and morphed, some pieces darkening while others lightened but nothing solidifying into anything decipherable. Nothing ever did. His world was only a collage of ever changing masses of greys and blacks.

"You fancy him," Morgana said. The hesitation and uncertainty had left her tone, leaving only soft pressing conviction. There was no accusation, only statement.

Merlin shook his head, fingers twisting and gripping his trousers as his anxiety grew. "No."

Yes. Desperately so.

But Morgana couldn't know that. No one could know that. It was not done, not in polite society. Not anywhere except behind closed doors and within whispered dreams.

Arthur was trying to build his relationship with his father, not destroy it. He was well on his way to taking over the family estate and business, would inherit it when his father grew too weary to continue on. One foot out of line could tarnish that and destroy the affluent life he had painstakingly kept a hold of. Merlin knew, despite how they both felt about each other, he was not the socially acceptable choice in this scenario. It didn't matter what was in their hearts.

Morgana, simply for her female form, was the more appropriate choice.

"I know you," Morgana continued in that same soft tone now laced with concern. The rustle of fabric in creases and sweeping featherlight along the floorboards beneath their feet was the only hint of her continued nervousness. "Better than anyone, I reckon. I've never seen you like this."

Merlin shifted, uncomfortable under Morgana's scrutiny. She was more observant than he gave her credit for. "Like what?"

"Drawn. Weathered." The house around them groaned in the silence of her pause. "Like you've taken ill with melancholy."

On the other side of the house, the back door opened and shut with creak, hard heeled shoes reverberating off the wooden floorboards as they headed towards the kitchen. Father was home.

"I'm in perfect health," Merlin said, trying to convince himself as much as Morgana. "I apologize for having caused you worry. Truly, I am fine." He mustered up a small smile for her, hoping it would be enough to placate her so he could go back to drowning in peace.

"Merlin." Her tone tore his ruse apart with nothing but his name. He never could keep anything from her, no matter how much he tried. They were too close.

It would take just a few words, an outpouring of his breaking heart to confirm her suspicions and turn the tables in his favor. He could do it, easily. But by speaking the truth, he would squash Morgana's chances at a better life, at happiness and fill her heart with guilt and shame. He couldn't do that to her. She deserved all that Arthur could give her, a life of ease and comfort and prosperity. She would want for nothing. It was about time she stopped worrying over Merlin, stopped always putting his happiness before her own, stopped having to care for him. She had been his eyes since they were children. It was time he let her go.

Merlin reached out, palm up in invitation. Morgana's warm supple hand slid into his and he brought it to his lips in a loving reassuring kiss. "Do not fret, Morgana. What I may have once felt was wrong and out of order and I no longer entertain such thoughts. No good can come from them." He lifted his head aiming his sightless gaze in the general vicinity of her face. With the last dregs of his energy, he gave her another smile and lied through his teeth. "I have found a more suitable companion, a woman from the town. Perhaps she will make a gracious wife one day."

There was a long pause. A raven cawed outside as the footsteps of their father retreated from the kitchen and out the back door once more on a creak of hinges.

"I am pleased to hear that."

Merlin thought he could hear a sadness in her voice, remorse, but he shook it off, telling himself it was only imaginary. Just a reverberation of his own rendered soul.

She kissed his head and left the room in a rustle of sweeping skirts and protesting floorboards, her footsteps getting softer and softer before the rhythm changed as she withdrew to the second floor. Merlin exhaled his anguish and pain, promising himself that he would do better to hide his melancholia or avoid interaction altogether. He wouldn't be a burden on his family any longer.

Merlin turned back to the piano, smelling the ghost of rose petals and lavender as he started up another sorrowful impromptu, losing himself in the rhythmic motion and letting all the heartache and pain he felt beneath his breastbone leach out into the ivory keys.

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 **A/N:** **Comments and critics are highly encouraged and welcome. Helps me improve my writing and gives me motivation to continue. Stay magical, my friends.**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** **Just so everyone knows, I'm sort of writing this out of order. So several events occur between this chapter and the first. I'm literally writing scenes as they come to me and that prompts inspire. This one was written for the Camelot Drabble prompt 300: unkept promises**

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The house heaved with the dark somber cloud of silence. Only the sounds of footsteps and hushed tones permeated it's hallways and gloomy rooms. No laughter, no bright chatter. No music.

It was a silence the house hadn't known for nearly twenty years now.

With a creak of old bones and a grunt of effort, Gaius extracted himself from the bedside chair, his weathered and worn leather medical bag moaning with strain as he picked it up. Merlin lay as he was, too exhausted to move, eyes closed out of habit and hope that maybe just maybe, he might be able to fall back asleep. He knew he had been sleeping in excess as it was and a part of him knew it couldn't be good, but he was too tired to care. Too tired for much of anything anymore.

His door brushed against the carpet as Gaius exited, greeted by the murmur of fabric as his parents shifted on the landing, no doubt anxiously waiting to assault the old doctor with questions about the health of their youngest.

Merlin tried to will himself to sleep faster.

The door must have left open a crack in Gaius' wake for the conversation filtered through on whispered words and subdued tones.

"He is indeed ill." Gaius' voice was direct, professional to a fault. He was a doctor first, and the Emrys family friend second. "Undernourished and exhausted. Has he been eating regularly like he ought to be?"

Hunith answered with breathy muffled words. "To the best of my knowledge, yes. He has been absent for a fair few suppers but that isn't uncommon with Merlin. He's always kept to himself."

"Has he seemed out of sorts recently? Mood change, odd behavior or disinterest?"

It was Balinor that spoke up then, his deep baritone voice laced with concern. "The piano has lay cold for nearly a fortnight now. It is most unusual."

There was a shuffling footstep, a sigh and brushing fabric. It was barely discernible to even Merlin's acute hearing. Honestly, he didn't want to bear witness to his own condemnation. All he wanted was to sleep and wake up to discover all of this had been a horrible dream. To realize Arthur was nothing more than a fantastical manifestation born from the fires of a feverish cold.

"He used to play every day, doctor." His mother's whispered words were sorrowful, lost, filled with pain. What was left of Merlin's heart cracked further. "Most of the day, in fact. I've never heard the house so quiet."

"Indeed. I believe this is no sickness of the body, but more of a sickness of the mind," Gaius said, his voice becoming smaller, harder to distinguish as the group moved further down the landing. "Melancholia is not unheard of in individuals who have a disability. Those who have experienced trauma and suffering…" The last of Gaius' words were swallowed up by their retreating footsteps, sharp on the wooden stairs until they faded altogether.

Merlin sighed.

He hadn't meant to, honestly he hadn't. He had promised himself he would do better, he would put effort into showing his sister, his family, hell even Arthur that he was fine. And he did, for a bit, or so he thought. He had thought he was still maintaining the carefully constructed ruse until a fainting spell just that morning nearly had him tumbling down the stairs.

Clearly he had only been deceiving himself.

When had it all changed? He was losing track of time, could hardly even remember the last meal he ate or what it was. Nor could he even remember when he had stopped entering the drawing room altogether, his desire to play pushed aside to make room for wallowing, for escaping out into the orchard to get away from anything and everything that reminded him of Arthur. Until that stopped as well as his energy flagged and his bed seemed more appealing than most everything else. Now he was just constantly exhausted, weak, nearly feverish. Or perhaps that was also just a manifestation of his mental sickness.

Either way, he was unwell, that much was abundantly clear. Morgana was worried, his parents uncertain. He promised to stop being a burden on his family but had only made it worse. They had tended to him his whole life and now he was

Now he was unwillingly fully embracing the role of useless disabled son that he had been trying to shake off his whole life.

And he could hardly dredge up the energy to care.

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 **A/N:** **Review give me strength, critics helps me improve. All are welcome. Stay magical, my friends**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** **So this snippet takes place in between Ch 1 and Ch 2, before Merlin is bedridden but after his melancholy has become noticeable (to Morgana at least). Written for the Camelot Drabble prompt #332: contest**

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The inn was nothing to gawk at, just a simple bed and breakfast run out of Mrs. Berwick's two story house nestled between two groves just off the town's beaten path. Certainly not one fitting for a man of Arthur's status. Pendragon senior clearly had no hand in setting up his son's lodgings, Morgana was sure of it. From what Arthur had told her about him, he would have scoffed at a place such as this. But it seemed to fit Arthur quite well.

No matter, she was not here to discuss Arthur's lodgings nor his father's tastes.

"Oh my, Miss Emrys." Mrs. Berwick stood in the parlor, her hand over her heart as Morgana strode through the front door with no more than a brief polite knock. "What are you doing out here at this time of night? And without a chaperone! It is quite unbecoming for a lady such as yourself."

Morgana stopped at the foot of the stairs. "Is Mr. Pendragon in his room?"

Mrs. Berwick nearly choked on her next breath. "Miss Emrys this is most improper. I cannot allow—"

"I assume that means yes," Morgana said ignoring what was sure to be Mrs. Berwick's most rehearsed lecture. The woman had had it out for Morgana ever since she had stormed in six summers ago and dragged Mr. Evert's son out by his ear. It was less than he deserved after what he said about Merlin. "Which room is his?"

Mrs. Berwick moved forward to block Morgana's path to the stairs but Morgana was too quick. She darted up the first few steps before turning to face the keeper, her eyes set.

Mrs. Berwick glared at her. "Miss Emrys—"

"Mrs. Berwick, I am going up there whether or not I have your blessing so you might as well tell me the room." She placed her boot up onto the next step to prove her point before flashing Mrs. Berwick her most award winning smile, promising good behavior and only a few knocked heads. "It'll save you from an awful lot of complaints when I start pounding down every door in order to find the correct one."

There was a few moments of silence in which the two women stared each other down, Morgana more so. She could see the fight bleeding out of Mrs. Berwick in the face of upholding her reputation and nearly crowed when the woman huffed. "Second door on the left."

"Thank you," Morgana said with a tilt of her head and flick of her skirts as she gathered them up and continued up the stairs.

"Don't think I won't come up there and drag you out if it's too quiet," Mrs. Berwick called after her, her voice low as to not disturb her tenants. Morgana rolled her eyes as she reached the landing and turned down the hallway. "Or too loud!"

Candles burned low in the sconces, their light dancing cheerily across the sparse walls. Morgana didn't even bother to hide the clomp of her boots on the wooden floorboards as she approached.

She knocked lightly, the sound echoing down the hall.

Barely a few seconds passed before soft footsteps approached from the other side and the door opened to reveal a dressed down Arthur in just a loose shirt, trousers and socked feet. It was the least put together she had ever seen him. She felt like this was the first time she had ever truly seen Arthur, the real Arthur, not the costumed version he displayed the rest of the world. And she knew she had made the right decision, coming to him tonight.

"Miss Emrys?" Arthur seemed shocked, but he quickly threw a mask of gentlemanly courtesy up to cover it. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" His eyes flit beyond her, darting left and right before finally landing back on her, disappointed by her lack of shadow. Yes, she had definitely made the right decision. "Where is your chaperone?"

"Merlin is—" she paused, unsure if she should tell him much about her brother's condition. She didn't want him to feel pressured into anything, to feel guilt or shame for anything. Not when all their fate's hung on his choice. But she also didn't want to lie to him and she still held out hope Merlin, given time, would make a full recovery no matter which way tonight went. "—unwell. I came here alone."

Arthur's brow furrowed, worry washing over his features in a heartbeat. Morgana wondered if he would so quickly jump to concern if it had been her that had taken ill instead of Merlin. She thought not but pushed the thought from her mind nonetheless. It was of little importance.

"Is he alright?" Arthur asked taking a tiny step forward before catching himself. "If there is anything I can do to help, name it and it shall be done."

"May I come in?" Morgana asked with a tilt of her chin.

Arthur hesitated, ever the gentleman. "Miss Emrys, I am not sure this is a good idea. It is quite improper—"

"Do hush, Arthur." Morgana said, her tone sharp but not unfriendly. "Neither of us cares much for propriety. Besides I'm not here for anything untoward. There is a delicate matter in which I must discuss with you." She glanced back toward the landing, toward where she had left Mrs. Berwick and where the keeper was no doubt dawdling in order to eavesdrop on their conversation.

Arthur seemed to pick up on this and nodded in understanding. "Alright then. Please come in." He stepped aside and gestured for her to enter.

"Thank you," she said before stepping passed him and into the room.

It was larger than she had anticipated, nearly the size of the drawing room back at the Emrys estate. The sparse decor followed in from the hallways, leaving the walls bare and the furniture delicately carved but hardy if not limited. Just a simple bed and side table filled the side of the room, with a dresser on the other. Not much else in way of making one feel at home.

And yet in the week Arthur had been staying there, he had filled it with his presence, his character spilling out of open drawers and disposition laid out within the haphazardly made bed. This was Arthur as few had ever seen him. As Morgana had barely glimpsed and Merlin had soaked up and bled out.

The creak of the closing door had Morgana turning toward her task and Arthur as he said, "What is it you wish to discuss—"

"I know you love my brother."

A brief silence fell over the room at her words and Morgana watched as Arthur's face flitted through shock, alarm before he could compose himself. "Miss Emrys—"

"For Christ's sake Arthur, call me Morgana." She didn't bother feeling any sort of guilt at cursing in his presence. If anything, this conversation would hopefully instill in him that her true character was anything but a proper lady. But she hoped to instill more than that in him. "We are well past the notion."

"Right." Arthur nodded. He looked away, took a few steps into the room before facing her again. "Morgana, while it may be true that I am," he paused, and she could see he was struggling for words, "fond of your brother, that is all—"

Morgana sighed, having had enough of this fancy footwork of his. "Don't take me for a fool, Arthur, please. You are more than fond of him." She watched his face, the blush that was creeping up his cheeks and the way he couldn't meet her gaze. "And he of you."

Arthur's head shot up, eyes searching her face for any hint of deception. Morgana remained stoic, standing tall as he studied her before he seemed to find something and his face softened. "That doesn't diminish what I feel for you."

He hadn't denied her words.

Morgana nodded. "I understand," she said, feeling some of the weight on her shoulders lessen with her assumptions confirmed. "I know we could be happy together, comfortable as husband and wife. But I also know that if it was solely up to you, barring society and your father's expectations, I would not win this contest."

"There is no contest, Morgana." Arthur said with a shake of his head. He stepped forward as if to comfort her and she held out her hand.

"Oh but there is," she said, taking his hand when he mirrored her gesture. They stepped closer and she lowered her voice as she held his gaze. "I see the way you look at him. The desire and war in your eyes. The choice between what your heart wants and what duty requires." She paused, letting her words sink in. "No matter the outcome, I will not protest, I want you to know that. He deserves the happiness you could provide him."

"I could make you happy as well." His words were almost pleading, as if her confirmation was all he needed to come to a decision. "Could I not?"

Morgana shook her head, earnest, as she placed her other hand over his. "You would, just as you already have, I am sure. But would you be happy in return?"

Arthur winced, the expression so small and fleeting that had she not known better, she would have thought it nothing but her own imagination. He looked away from her. "It is unbecoming. Society would never allow it." His voice lowered then, soft and nearly pained when he next spoke. "My feelings and desires in this matter are of no importance."

Morgana squeezed his hand, pulling his gaze back to her. "You follow the rules and do what is expected of you with little thought for your own happiness." She leveled him with a sharp look, hardening her tone. "But I know you Arthur, I have seen the fire that takes root when you really care about something. About someone. You will find a way, if it is truly what you want."

She smiled and squeezed his hand again, raising it up to place a simple kiss on the back before releasing him altogether. He stared after her as she strode to the door, drawing it open with a creak of hinges and dipped her head in farewell.

She turned her head in the doorway as Arthur spoke up behind her. "Thank you, Morgana, for your kind words." The resignation was back in his eyes and the low tone of his voice even as he offered her a smile that hardly scratched the surface. "But this not up to me."

"It is if you allow it to be," Morgana said, stepping out into the hallway toward the landing and leaving Arthur to make his own decision for the first time in his life.

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 **A/N:** **Thanks for sticking with my crazy confusing way of posting this story. Sorry it's all over the place. Don't hesitate to let me know how annoyed and angry you are, or just any old review or comment. I'll take them all. Stay magical, my friends**


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